Exploring the Canonici Collection

Friday 24- Saturday 25 November 2017

Two Hundred Years of Italian Manuscripts in Oxford. Exploring the Canonici Collection

Oxford, Bodleian Libraries & Lincoln College

Amongst the Bodleian’s rich holdings of Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, the number from Italy is second only to those from the British Isles. This is due chiefly to the collection of one man, the Venetian Jesuit Matteo Luigi Canonici (1727-1805/6), who devoted himself to collecting after the suppression of the order in parts of Italy in 1773. After his death the collection passed eventually to Giovanni Perisinotti, who sold over 2,000 manuscripts to the Bodleian in 1817.

Canonici’s manuscripts range from Latin and Greek classical literature to biblical, liturgical and patristic texts, from medieval vernacular literature to philosophical texts, to medical treatises and to Humanistic literature.

To celebrate the bicentenary of the arrival of the Canonici collection from Venice, a two-day international conference, accompanied by a small display of manuscripts, is planned in Oxford on 24-25 November 2017.